Embodiments herein generally relate to printing devices and more particularly to a printing device and method that uses optical character recognition of bitmap images to validate print jobs.
The embodiments herein relate to how to use a printer to collect data within a document during the print process to validate each page regardless of original print stream format.
When printing an item, electronic files that contain instructions on how to construct and print a document are sent to a printer. These instructions are interpreted by the printer and page images are composed and then used to drive the printing mechanism to image each page on the transfer media. The final printed image is therefore impacted primarily by the instructions on how it should be constructed and the performance quality of the printing mechanism and transfer process. Quality control of the printed output can be performed by manual inspection after the job has completed printed. However, this approach misses problems and causes considerable expense in handling for inspection and reprinting if actual print data varied or changed during the overall process.
One embodiment herein provides a method that captures bitmapped images of pages of a print job that have been raster image processed by a digital front end of a printing device (while they are being printed by the printing device). The electronic instance of the bitmapped images are captured from the printing device's buffer using a computerized device, potentially positioned within the printing device. The computerized device collects electronic image data. The embodiments herein also capture scanned images or sensed data from the predetermined area of sheets of media printed by the printing device according to the print job, using an optical imaging or sensing device operatively connected to the computerized device, and compare within a tolerance the scanned images to the electronic image data (potentially on a print density, other derived metric or pixel-by-pixel basis) to validate whether the print job printed within an acceptable statistical standard.
While the foregoing describes a method embodiment, a device embodiment is also presented herein. Such a printing device comprises a computerized device that captures bitmapped images of pages of a print job that have been raster image processed while being printed by the printing device. The computerized device collects electronic image data from the bitmapped images of the pages. The printing device includes an optical imaging device operatively connected to the computerized device. Embodiments herein capture scanned images from the predetermined area of sheets of media printed by the printing device according to the print job, using the optical imaging device, and compare the scanned images to the electronic image data to validate whether the print job printed correctly.
The method and apparatus embodiments herein produce an audit report based on the comparing process using the computerized device and output the audit report from the printing device. The processes of capturing the bitmapped images, collecting the electronic image data, capturing the scanned images, and comparing the scanned images to the electronic image data are all performed on the print job by the computerized device while the printing device is printing the print job. In addition, a light source can be used to illuminate the sheets while the scanned images are being captured. Further, the “at least one predetermined area” of the bitmapped images is less than all of each bitmapped image, but is the same area on each of the bitmapped images.
These and other features are described in, or are apparent from, the following detailed description.